sábado, 23 de febrero de 2019

Broadband implementation in the province of Lleida

During a lot of years, great efforts have
been carried out to provide this Catalan region with great connection
facilities in the Broadband Society. During the first years of the 21st
century, broadband arrived to Catalunya,
but often in a non-regular way. For this reason, in 2003, during the rise of
Internet and communication technologies, the local government, the Generalitat
of Catalonia, launched the program ‘Catalunya Connecta’.

A plan that intended to provide access to the new
communication technologies - including broadband - to the Catalan
territories, especially within the rural areas. We analyse it in, focused
in the Lleida’s
reality, essential for tourism, in collaboration with UPF.

Broadband coverage in the rural areas by the
Generalitat of Catalunya: First step (from 2003 to 2018). This project had 4
main cornerstones, and even though they were supposed to take place
independently, in many occasions they shared infrastructures and facilities.
These four are: the radio communications infrastructure, the Mobile Telephone
technology, the Digital and Terrestrial Television, and the Rural Broadband.

To address the broadband implementation, an evaluation
of the whole Catalan situation was carried out. Results showed that there were
2.067 villages were lacking ADSL technology, which was beacon of the wide
difference of implementation that this technology had in the different Catalan
regions. In order to face this situation, the program designed a special
project: Banda Ampla Rural (BAR) (Rural Broadband). This plan aimed to provide
with broadband the villages that had more than 50 inhabitants; connect the
industrial parks via WiMAX technology, and guarantee a service of quality to
the old and new users of this network.

However, the BAR project wasn’t enough to guarantee
internet access to all rural areas in Catalunya. This is why the Generalitat
launched a parallel program, called BAR-SAT (Rural Broadband via Satellite).
This plan sought to provide with internet access those areas where installing
other kinds of technology (ADSL, WiMAX or 3G) was impossible or considerably
difficult. Offering connection to more than 2.200 new users, BAR-SAT had the
Tooway™ technology, provided by the Eutelsat platform. This is a bidirectional
broadband service that can achieve speeds and costs similar to those from ADSL
technology. Furthermore, this system included the Fair Access Policy (FAP), a
temporal regulation system that ensures that all online users can have the same
amount of connection.

Current step: from 2018 until today. While this technology
was enough during the first years of 2000, it became progressively obsolete due
to the increase of Internet demands. Plus, it only gave coverage to 66% of the
territory. In this scenario, the Generalitat of Catalunya designed a plan to
change the technology that brought broadband. It is Accés Fix Ràdio (AFR), a
system based on 3G and 4G service that offers better benefits and a greater
coverage. This improvement is going to amplify broadband coverage for up to 91%
of the Catalan territory (99% of the population).

Case study: the province of Lleida. A paradigmatic
example of this implementation of Internet access to the villages can be found
in Lleida province. After an agreement approved in September 2018 between the
Generalitat de Catalunya and the Deputation, high-speed Internet connection
will be provided to all of Lleida’s villages within the next five years. Within
the frame of the new plan approved last year, they have set the plan to provide
with fiber optic all of the province’s villages, tracing a 1.500 km-long cable
way in a period of 5 years.

The capital of the province, the city of Lleida, was
one of the first cities in the world to have Fiber to the Home connection (FTTH)
in about 90% of its homes. Moreover, the technology is due to give service not
only to houses, but up to 66.740 commercial spaces and businesses.

In the year 2017, the numbers of penetration of the
Information Technology in the region of Segrià, which comprises the city of
Lleida, were roughly higher than the rest of Catalunya. More concretely, the
percentages extracted from Idescat are the next. The available broadband average
in Catalunya is 82,9%; in Segrià, 83,4%; in Alta Ribagorça, 80%; Alt Urgell, 79,1%;
Cerdanya, 79,7%; Les Garrigues, 81,3%; La Noguera, 81,4%; Pallars Jussà, 77,3%;
Pallars Sobirà, 76,3%; Pla d’Urgell, 82,5%; La Segarra, 82,3%; El Solsonès, 80,5%;
L’Urgell, 82%; La Val d’Aran, 80%.

The data of the FTTH of the city of Lleida provided by
the Spanish Government fit to the results of the plan, and affirms that its
penetration is between the 90 and the 100%. However, this is a quite high number
compared to the province’s average, which is of 57,3%. This number places
Lleida before Girona (53,8%) and Tarragona (49,8%), but still in a great
difference compared to Barcelona (93,7%).

When it comes to other categories, the data displayed
related to the other Catalan provinces offer interesting interpretations. There’s
not a big difference when it comes to the different provinces in terms of IT
technologies. However, Lleida has a great impact in the wireless networks that
are superior to 30 Mbps. This fact may be explained as a result of the
‘Catalunya Connecta’ plan, which aimed to provide with wireless connection to
the Lleida province.

For the city of Lleida, the range of coverage is
between 90 and 100% for ADSL technologies superior to 2 Mbps. It is between 70
and 80% for the range of ADSL technologies superior to 10 Mbps, between 90 and
100% in the wireless networks superior to 2 Mbps. And again, between 70 and 80%
in wireless networks superior to 30 Mbps.

Taking everything into consideration, we can affirm that
Lleida has a good connection adapted to its geographical characteristics. While
it is true that it is the province with the smaller population density, by what
can be extracted from the Economic Memory of Catalonia in 2017, it can be
observed that in general it has a great Internet connection, probably as a
response to the big infrastructures and industries that take place in the
flatter areas of the province. We analyze local broadband evolution (here, the case of Lleida)
in this blog, in Research Group about Digital Journalism and Marketing and
Broadband and in Research Group on Innovative Monetization Systems of Digital
Journalism, Marketing and Tourism (SIMPED), from CECABLE, Escola Universitària
Mediterrani of UdG, UPF and Blanquerna-URL, in Twitter
(@CECABLEresearch), Google+,
in the group of
LinkedIn, in the page of LinkedIn,
in the group of
Facebook, in Instagram (CECABLE), in Pinterest and in this
blog. We will go in deep in the XXIV Cable and
Broadband Catalonia Congress (9-10 April 2019,
Barcelona).